CORS Tutorial Balloting Strategy

Having just recieved the results of my tutorial balloting via CORS, I decided to explore the tutorial slots still available for balloting. As I had expected, the tutorial balloting results reflects the student population's balloting strategies.

To provide a general idea of how the tutorial balloting results are, I'll copy the results for one particular module.

T1[25/25]   T2[25/25]   T3[17/25]
T4[6/25]    T5[6/25]    T6[3/25]
T7[25/25]   T8[25/25]   T9[25/25]
T10[22/25]  T11[12/25]  T12[13/25]

Each set of 3 slots corresponds to a tutorial in a certain timeslot. For example, T1, T2, and T3 all correspond to the same timeslot.

Assuming that each student has a specific preference for a certain timeslot but no preference for any tutorial group within that timeslot, it becomes obvious that the most prevalent strategy for tutorial balloting is to rank the slots (for the desired timeslot) in numerical order.

However, since that is the most prevalent strategy, it also means that those who adopt that particular strategy face the greatest competition in their tutorial balloting. This situation is analogous to that of a discoordination game (or congestion game), where the player is rewarded for making a dissimilar choice to the majority. However, if everyone adopts the same strategy for making a dissimilar choice, eventually everyone makes the same choice and the strategy fails (badly!).

Hence, although I would certainly advise students to not rank their ballots in numerical order, if everyone does so, my advice would be useless! In anycase, I always rank my ballots in reverse numerical order. But, please, do not adopt my strategy!


*P.S. For more pseudo-useful advice regarding bidding or balloting strategies, refer to this previous post.*